Blueberry Express

"The Blueberry Express" was a common nickname for a train that runs so slowly that it is possible to get off the front of the train while it is in motion, pick a basket of blueberries, and board the rear as it passes. This tale probably has been repeated everywhere in North America where a weary little train goes about its duties. In the Annapolis Valley, the mixed trains of the DAR's Kingsport Line bore the Blueberry Express nickname in their final years. But to many people between Middleton and Bridgewater, "The Blueberry Express" was the mixed train which, wandered, daily except Sunday, over Canadian National trackage to the Valley.

M. Allen Gibson best described the memory of "The Blueberry Express " in a newspaper article many years ago:

It is waiting for us, standing in front of the station in Middleton. Behind the locomotive are five freight cars, followed by a wooden baggage car and a wooden coach. The atmosphere is of an older, long gone day. The engine is number 1120, a G16a ten-wheeler. It was built in Montreal in 1912 and boasts 57-inch drivers.

The conductor arrives, sauntering up the platform with a flimsy green clearance form in his hand. "All aboard" he cries and waves to the engineer.

Wheezing and clanking, the engine backs the train slowly away and along Dominion Atlantic trackage to the junction with the line to the South Shore. There is one lady passenger aboard who insists that the conductor will have to reverse her seat. "I simply cannot ride backwards", she protests. It challenges his powers of persuasion to convince her that the train will he running frontward in a few minutes.

At the junction, the brakeman closes and locks the last switch, swings the languid "highball" and climbs aboard the coach. The first mile is downgrade towards the Annapolis River and the train quickly accelerates.

The Annapolis Valley, with its orchards and farms is soon crossed and number 1120 blows for Nictaux, a charming little village nestled at the foot of the mountain. It is at this point that the railway begins its climb into the hills. Without stopping at the station, the train tackles the long, steep grade ahead.

Almost at once, the trackside scenery changes from the fertile plain to the rock and forest of the mountainside. To the left of the right-of-way, the Nictaux River plunges over the rocks and through the gorges that mark its course. It is spectacular viewing but it must have challenged the ingenuity of the construction engineers.

Clinging to the river bank, the rails twist and climb. Speed drops to a crawl. Whenever the locomotive comes into view around a curve, one has a glimpse of smoke and steam belching skyward and of slowly moving siderods.

The coach creaks and sways. Occasionally, a dirt road crosses the railway. At some of these intersections, there is a tiny station and we ramble on through Alpena, Albany, Squirelltown, Scragg Lake, and so on. Wild animals are to be seen at trackside, unperturbed by the noisy passage of mixed train 254.

Springfield is the first community of any size since leaving Nictaux. At this point, the train is well over the mountain; having completed the 28 miles from Middleton right on scheduled time – 28 miles in an hour and a half!

-- Halifax Chronicle Herald -- October 1, 1959

A Beloved Blueberry - The decision of Canadian National Railways to abandon its cross country passenger service between Bridgewater and Middleton was probably inevitable in view of its decreasing patronage, Nevertheless, there are hundreds who will receive the announcement with regret, for this train which has been to many the original "Blueberry Express", possesses a large place in their affections.

In bygone day, the line was an important connection between the Valley and the South Shore. Before the Halifax and Southwestern was constructed, travelers from points in Lunenburg County journeyed over it to link up with the Dominion Atlantic services on route to Central Canada and the Eastern States. Even over its years as part of the Canadian National System, it has continued as an important artery.

It was a leisurely service, powered, until the diesels came, by stocky little steam locomotives whose clanking side rods announced arrivals long before waiting passengers could see the train rolling and bouncing toward them. What a host of memories are stirred! Boyhood days at a camp at Pinehurst were filled with the comings and goings of the train bringing other campers and the welcome mail; one thinks again of the shoppers and hunters for whom any place along the track was a stop; and, where stations were built, they were masterpieces of architectural imagination combining stonework with tasteful frame construction. During war years, the line was traveled by thousands of naval personnel moving between the South Shore and HMCS Cornwallis. Now, a victim of the progress to which it contributed, the mixed train, "daily except Sunday" is soon to make its last run.

But long after those folk have gone who can recall the ancient coach with its pintsch gas lamps, the sound of the lonely whistle echoing along the Lahave, and the sight of a smudge of smoke above the forest at Squirreltown, this train will be remembered in the delightful legend of the "Blueberry Express." For this was the train, so they said, which moved so slowly that one could hop off the head end of the coach, gather a handful of berries, and board the rear as it passed by. It is doubtful whether anyone ever did this, but such a story as affection breeds. By it, this train will be immortalized beyond Nova Scotia and by generations that may never know the music of flanges screaming on the curves along the Nictaux River.